Screen Icebergs

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Quietly released in early 2018, Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits is the type of film that
easily gets overlooked this time of year. An ode of sorts to Rohmer, the
writer-director’s latest follows the intersecting lives of some New Yorkers,
all of whom are connected in some way to visiting Australian, Naomi (Emily
Browning). This may be Perry’s “warmest” film to date, but his trademark,
acidic dialogue is still on full display. Most rewarding are the subtle
parallels that emerge between the older and younger characters, as if the
latter are looking at their potential future selves in a mirror.

Friday, November 9, 2018

Despite David Gordon Green’s considerable skills
behind the camera and John Carpenter’s stamp of approval, Halloween (2018) cannot escape the clutches of fan service
(multiple lines and shots are directly lifted from the 1978 classic). Ironically,
the film is most successful during its comedic scenes; cowriter Danny McBride’s
touch can be felt in much of the dialogue, especially during a vulgar rat-a-tat
between a teenage girl and the little boy she is babysitting. Such moments are
more than welcome. After all, Carpenter’s original has its fair share of
strange humor. Green and McBride forgot one crucial element, though: genuine
scares.

Saturday, September 29, 2018

In his fourth feature film,
Jeremy Saulnier applies his interest in elemental storytelling (simple motifs
of darkness vs. light, revenge, etc.) to a much larger narrative canvas. Famous
wolf tracker Russell Core (an understated Jeffrey Wright) travels to Alaska for
a job and is embroiled in a sometimes overstuffed plot that tackles parenthood,
Native American identity, mysticism, and war in the Middle East, among other
things. Perhaps a bit overambitious for its own good, Hold
the Dark (2018) nevertheless has its fair share of mesmerizing sequences,
especially a remarkable shootout that showcases all of the director's
compositional and tension-building finesse.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Joachim Trier’s Thelma (2017) adds a supernatural twist
to his usual humanistic technique. It opens intriguingly enough, with a
booming, Scanners-esque score by Ola
Fløttum and a startling scene in which a father contemplates killing his young
daughter, Thelma (played as an adult by Eili Harboe). The girl, we learn, has
dangerous powers, which reemerge when she becomes attracted to a college
classmate, Anja (Kaya Wilkins). The relationship between these two women is the
film’s strongest element, but Trier instead focuses on the origins of Thelma’s psychic
powers in the film’s latter half, which spoils some of the premise’s mystique.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Accidence
(2018)
immediately demands multiple viewings. Presented as a single shot that merges
live action and unobtrusive animation, the short chronicles the goings-on of an
array of apartment building tenants whose paths intertwine in unexpected and surreal
ways. The stories on dollhouse-like display range from the banal (a man
sleeping on his balcony), to the dramatic (a murder), to the bewildering (a man
investigating shadows through a window). Maddin, Johnson, and Johnson merge the beginning and end (a clock in the central room proves key) so that
the film, like a mesmerizing ambient album, could seemingly repeat itself into
eternity.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Like its
conflicted protagonist, Maurice Haeems’ Chimera
(2018) suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. On the one hand, it is a
cerebral piece of speculative science-fiction: Henry Ian Cusick (playing it
straight) is Quint, a scientist who freezes his children while searching for
a cure to their life-threatening illness. On the other hand, it is a gleefully
over-the-top ode to B-movies: Kathleen Quinlan (hamming it up) costars as
Masterson, a mysterious woman funding Quint’s experiments in hopes of reviving
her husband. Some wild shifts in tone make Chimera
uneven yet unpredictable. Its final third packs an undeniable punch.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Daniel Day-Lewis gives a quietly intense and vulnerable
performance as Reynolds Woodcock, an obsessive fashion designer, in what will be his final film. There is much to admire here, from the sumptuous
costume design, to a hedonistic, almost surreal New Year’s Eve party, to some
beautiful footage of Woodcock’s reckless nighttime drives (Anderson is the uncredited director of photography). The film’s second half, detailing
the protagonist’s unconventional relationship with his muse/wife, Alma (Vicky
Krieps), is its most engaging, especially when the writer-director dips
ever-so-slightly into supernatural territory. Ultimately, like its central character, Phantom Thread remains aesthetically fascinating
but emotionally remote.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

By Thomas PuhrMaureen
(Kristen Stewart, in an eye-opening performance), a part-time clairvoyant and
full-time personal shopper for a spoiled celebrity, obsessively searches for a
sign from her deceased brother in Olivier Assayas’ enigmatic Personal Shopper (2016).
Though the film does showcase some supernatural imagery, it is most intriguing
as a character study. As Maureen stalks the empty rooms of what was her twin’s
house, tiptoes around her perpetually-absent boss’ lavish apartment to update
it with the latest couture and jewelry, and has an increasingly-disturbing text
dialogue with an unknown number, one realizes she is just as much a ghost as
her brother.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

A gay couple (Sean Teale and Tom Bateman) staying at a
bread and breakfast play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with its homophobic
proprietor (Paul McGann) and another guest (James Tratas), who they suspect is
a “basher.” Writer-director Joe Ahearne takes this premise, which initially
feels like a setup for some gore-fest, and moves it in some unexpected
directions; think of a DePalma-esque psychosexual thriller crossed with a
tragic morality play. Once the final twist has settled in, one is left with the
bleak impression that those living double lives may sometimes be more
imprisoned than those literally behind bars.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Within its crisp 17-minute runtime, Justin Harding and
Rob Brunner’s Latched (2017) pulls
off an impressive feat. Deftly combining elements of drama, folklore, and
all-out horror, this short follows single mother Alana (Alana Elmer), who
retreats to an isolated cabin for creative inspiration only to find herself
the unwitting harbinger of a murderous fairy from the surrounding woods. The
conceit behind the fairy’s reawakening is both perverse and darkly humorous,
and the practical effects for the creature are top notch. Vivien Villani’s
sweeping, orchestral score helps create a gothic-tinged atmosphere for what
could have been a tasteless exercise in gratuity.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Amy Miller’s eye-opening Tomorrow’s Power (2017) begins with a shocking hospital scene in Gaza, wherein surgeons are interrupted mid-operation by a power outage. All
they can do is wait in the dark and hope the lights return as soon as possible. This emergency, we
learn, is a common occurrence in Gaza. Miller’s globe-trotting documentary
further chronicles the energy crisis in terms of oil exploitation in Colombia and
coal plant deforestation in Germany. Most engagingly, she discards the
usual voiceovers, academic commentators, etc. in favor of having those actually
affected by these crises tell their own stories, in their own words.

A cocktail of screwball comedy, coming-of-age drama,
and family mystery, The Song of Sway Lake
(2017) perhaps tries to be too many things at once. Its first third is its
most lighthearted and successful; audiophile Ollie (Rory Culkin) and his
wayward companion Nikolai (Robert Sheehan, who delivers some creative
one-liners with gusto) crash the former’s family estate in search of a
priceless, nearly-mythical record. These early misadventures provide many
genuine laughs, but director Ari Gold’s detours into darker family drama feel
abrupt and unnecessary. Nevertheless, the film has a big heart and undeniable
charm (not to mention a lovely soundtrack).

An unnamed man and woman (Todd Bruno and Aniela
McGuinness) abduct and torture a suspected rapist (Mike Stanley) as part of an
ill-conceived plot to extract a confession. Writer-director Lou Simon’s 3 (2016) takes what at first seems a
straightforward premise and cleverly shifts the character dynamics so that each
person, at one point or another, seems to be both the hero and villain. The small
cast and spare setting lend the film a theatrical atmosphere, and Simon wisely
avoids excessive gore in favor of psychological tension. The twist ending,
though unexpected, doesn’t mesh convincingly with the film preceding it.

Thursday, August 17, 2017

By Thomas PuhrDespite an unconvincing performance by Aiden Longworth
as the titular character and a glaringly-obvious twist ending, Alexandre Aja’s The 9th Life of Louis Drax (2016)
is still noteworthy as a phantasmagoric cocktail of genres (it mixes elements
of feel-good family dramas, creature features, psychosexual thrillers, police
procedurals, and [naturally] graphic horror-shows in its story of the mysterious
circumstances surrounding Louis’ coma-inducing fall from a cliff during a
family picnic) and as an opportunity for the director to display some
genuinely-startling imagery; consider, for example, an extended, dreamlike
hypnosis session, or the del Toro-esque monster that guides Louis through his subconscious.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Things repeated in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson (2016): circles, symbols of repetition, painted on curtains;
twins, both literal and figurative (the titular Paterson [Adam Driver], an
aspiring poet, encounters a Japanese doppelganger at a crucial moment); the daily
routines of Paterson and his wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), the small
variations of which feel like different drafts for the same, universal poem; word-filled
pages replaced by empty pages, which must be filled again; and water,
indicative of both life’s transience and endurance. Paterson, recognizing these cycles, continues his life’s work; to paraphrase his “twin,” an empty page
sometimes presents the most possibilities.